Since the historic election on November 4, momentum has been steadily building for universal voter registration. Key allies, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Election Assistance Commission Chair Rosemary Rodriguez, have advocated for establishing a voter registration system where the government, not each individual citizen, is responsible for ensuring full and accurate voter rolls. The voting rights community has put universal voter registration at the top of its legislative agenda and newspaper editorial boards around the country have endorsed such a change. FairVote has been a longtime advocate for universal voter registration, as well as other reforms that can be done at the state level in its spirit, including automatic voter registration and setting a uniform voter registration age of 16-years-old. [Read more about Universal Voter Registration]
[FairVote's op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution]
[FairVote's State Voter Registration Agenda]
[Boston Globe Endorsement]
[NYTimes article with endorsements from Sen. Clinton & Chair Rodriguez]
[Brennan Center for Justice Proposal]
While the nation's pundit-class waits in suspense to see the final
outcome in the final three U.S. Senate races, the so-called "spoiler"
problem is rearing its ugly head again. In all three races, independent
and third-party candidates earned enough support to deny the final
winners a majority of the vote. But this November, Memphis (TN)
addressed this problem by overwhelmingly passing instant runoff voting
(IRV) by 70% for city races. Telluride also approved IRV handily and will be heading towards implementation.